Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer says she was pressured to approve a real estate project connected to David Samson, an adviser to Governor Christie.

Hoboken’s mayor on Saturday became the latest politician to accuse the Christie administration of strong-arming local officials to get what it wants — this time, alleging top administration officials openly threatened to withhold Superstorm Sandy rebuilding money unless she helped fast-track a private real-estate project tied to a close Christie adviser.

The governor’s office forcefully challenged the explosive allegations, questioned their timing and pointed out that Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer had publicly praised the governor’s rebuilding efforts as recently as August — after her two alleged encounters with Christie Cabinet members.

The accusation surfaced Saturday as the governor’s office was still reeling from the fallout over access-lane closures at the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee that appear to have been politically motivated, prompting multiple investigations that are likely to extend well into the start of Christie’s second gubernatorial term on Tuesday. The lane-closure controversy has also led several local officials to come forward to say they may have been victims of the hard-ball tactics by the Christie administration, too — opening a debate over whether the claims are driven by political opportunism or are surfacing because there is less fear of retribution from the governor’s office.

Ten days ago, as the lane-closure scandal was unfolding, Zimmer said publicly that she wondered whether the city got less Sandy aid because she didn’t endorse Christie for reelection.

On Saturday, Zimmer for the first time alleged that two Christie Cabinet members — Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and the state commissioner who oversees Sandy aid – had told her last year that the city wouldn’t get additional Sandy rebuilding money unless she moved forward on a proposed real estate project in the northern section of Hoboken. The developer of that project, the Rockefeller Group, was represented by the law firm of David Samson, a close Christie adviser who Christie appointed as chairman of the Port Authority.

Democrats, meanwhile, said the latest allegations were troubling and some said they warranted an investigation. Without independent witnesses, the accusations rest on Zimmer’s word against those of the Christie administration.

Zimmer said she documented her interaction with Guadagno during a May 2013 visit in a contemporaneous journal entry she read during an interview with The Record on Saturday.

“At the end of a big tour of ShopRite and meeting, [Guadagno] pulls me aside, with no one else around and says that I need to move forward with the Rockefeller project. ‘It is very important to the governor.’ ”

She quoted Guadagno as telling her: “The word is you are against it. And you need to move it forward or we are not going to be able to help you. I know it’s not right, these things should not be connected, but they are, she says. If you tell anyone I said that, I will deny it.”

Zimmer said she would swear under oath about the incident and challenged the others to do the same.

She also alleged the commissioner of the agency distributing federal Sandy money, Richard Constable III of the state Department of Community Affairs, asked her if she was opposed to the Rockefeller project when they appeared on a public television program together in May of last year. She said he told her “the money would start flowing to you” if she backed the project. A spokeswoman for Constable — like Guadagno, a former federal prosecutor — also denied that as “categorically false.”

Belmar Mayor Matt Doherty, a Democrat, was at the same event at Monmouth University.

“I spoke to each about Sandy-related topics, but I didn’t hear any conversation between the two of them,” he said. “I spoke to each of them individually.”

The Rockefeller Group told MSNBC, which first reported Zimmer’s allegations Saturday, that it had no knowledge of the alleged conversations: “If it turns out to be true, it would be deplorable.”

The back-and-forth put a spotlight on a potentially valuable tract in Hoboken that two key Christie allies have had a role in trying to develop: Samson and Lori Grifa, both attorneys at the politically connected law firm of Wolff & Samson.

Grifa, who preceded Constable as Community Affairs commissioner, told Zimmer when she was still commissioner that the Christie administration could help pay for a study of the land that would help speed development, Zimmer told MSNBC.

The Port Authority, which Christie jointly controls with his New York counterpart, Andrew Cuomo, agreed to pick up the $75,000 cost of a study in late 2010, about two months after Christie appointed David Samson as chairman of the agency, records show. The money was drawn from a fund that the New York and New Jersey governors tap into for pet projects in each state. The Port Authority chose the firm to conduct the study, Zimmer told the network. Samson did not respond to a request for comment Saturday.

As the study was under way, Grifa left the administration in early 2012 and became a lawyer at Wolff & Samson, Samson’s law firm. Grifa has a long history with Samson. She joined his law firm in 1997 and served as his chief of staff from 2002 to 2003 when he was New Jersey’s attorney general.

State records show that after she returned to the firm, she served as a lobbyist for the Rockefeller Group, promoting the company in front of state regulatory agencies last year.

The Port Authority-funded study, which came out last year, found that 10 of the 53 lots examined met the criteria for needing “redevelopment” — eight of them owned by a subsidiary of the Rockefeller Group. Those lots would then qualify for the highest level of support from the city, including the power to make loans to the developers and acquire property through eminent domain, according to the MSNBC report.

Around the time the city Planning Board was to vote on whether to approve the recommendation, Zimmer said, she was pressured to back the development.

Lisa Ryan, a spokeswoman for Constable said: “Mayor Zimmer’s allegation that on May 16, 2013, in front of a live auditorium audience, Commissioner Constable conditioned Hoboken’s receipt of Sandy aid on her moving forward with a development project is categorically false.”

The Hoboken Planning Board voted on May 8, 2013, to table the proposal to designate the blocks largely controlled by Park Willow LLC as a redevelopment area, pending further study.

Decisions over the development were playing out as low-lying Hoboken was trying to recover from Superstorm Sandy, which struck in October 2012. In the aftermath, billions in federal disaster money came to New Jersey, and the Christie administration was in charge of deciding how to spend most of it.

Zimmer said she requested $100 million in Sandy money from the state but, so far, the city has gotten only $342,000.

But the Christie administration said Hoboken’s request was a small part of the $14 billion requested by all of the state’s municipalities. It also said that Hoboken had received approval for $70 million through a variety of state and federal programs.

“It’s very clear partisan politics are at play here as Democratic mayors with a political axe to grind come out of the woodwork and try to get their faces on television,” Christie spokesman Colin Reed said in a statement.

The Christie administration pointed out that Zimmer has not raised concerns about the conversations until now. In August, as Christie was running for reelection and courting endorsements from Democratic mayors, Zimmer sent out a message on her Twitter account.

“To be clear I am very glad Governor Christie has been our Gov.,” she wrote, while explaining she was not endorsing anyone because Hoboken’s mayoral race is non-partisan.

In a radio interview that aired Jan. 10, after the lane-closure story picked up steam, Zimmer questioned whether her decision not to endorse Christie might be the reason for little Sandy aid and said she hoped it wasn’t.

Asked about that on Saturday, she said: “I never said it was about the … not endorsing. I said: ‘OK, was it retribution? I really hope that’s not the case.’ ”

Zimmer’s chief of staff, Daniel Bryan, said Saturday that Zimmer told him about the interaction with Guadagno shortly after it occurred.

“‘The lieutenant governor just threatened me,’Ÿ” Bryan recalled Zimmer saying to him in May right after he witnessed Guadagno and Zimmer talking in the parking lot of a ShopRite. He said Zimmer looked disturbed when they walked toward the car after her conversation with Guadagno. When they got in the car, she told him.

Zimmer met with Christie administration and NJ Transit officials on Thursday to ask for support for a plan to protect Hoboken from the kind of flooding the city experienced during Sandy. The plan, which she believes would qualify for Sandy recovery money, requires approval by the Christie administration. She said she feared the city would not get approval if she stayed silent.

“I’m just concerned that that threat is very much still out there, Zimmer said. “They did it with the first round of funding.”

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, chairwoman of the bipartisan Select Committee on Investigation that is probing the George Washington Bridge lane closures, said these new allegations from Zimmer will be included in the committee’s investigation, which starts on Wednesday.

“I think we have to get to the bottom of this,” said Weinberg, a Democrat from Teaneck. “It goes to the heart of the democracy.”

Her counterpart heading an investigative committee in the Assembly, John Wisniewski, a Democrat from Middlesex, called the allegations “disturbing” and said he would discuss the issue with the committee’s special counsel to determine the panel’s next step.

Hoboken’s mayor on Saturday became the latest politician to accuse the Christie administration of strong-arming local officials to get what it wants — this time, alleging top administration officials openly threatened to withhold Superstorm Sandy rebuilding money unless she helped fast-track a private real-estate project tied to a close Christie adviser.

The governor’s office forcefully challenged the explosive allegations, questioned their timing and pointed out that Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer had publicly praised the governor’s rebuilding efforts as recently as August — after her two alleged encounters with Christie Cabinet members.

The accusation surfaced Saturday as the governor’s office was still reeling from the fallout over access-lane closures at the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee that appear to have been politically motivated, prompting multiple investigations that are likely to extend well into the start of Christie’s second gubernatorial term on Tuesday. The lane-closure controversy has also led several local officials to come forward to say they may have been victims of the hard-ball tactics by the Christie administration, too — opening a debate over whether the claims are driven by political opportunism or are surfacing because there is less fear of retribution from the governor’s office.

Ten days ago, as the lane-closure scandal was unfolding, Zimmer said publicly that she wondered whether the city got less Sandy aid because she didn’t endorse Christie for reelection.

On Saturday, Zimmer for the first time alleged that two Christie Cabinet members — Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and the state commissioner who oversees Sandy aid – had told her last year that the city wouldn’t get additional Sandy rebuilding money unless she moved forward on a proposed real estate project in the northern section of Hoboken. The developer of that project, the Rockefeller Group, was represented by the law firm of David Samson, a close Christie adviser who Christie appointed as chairman of the Port Authority.

Democrats, meanwhile, said the latest allegations were troubling and some said they warranted an investigation. Without independent witnesses, the accusations rest on Zimmer’s word against those of the Christie administration.

Zimmer said she documented her interaction with Guadagno during a May 2013 visit in a contemporaneous journal entry she read during an interview with The Record on Saturday.

“At the end of a big tour of ShopRite and meeting, [Guadagno] pulls me aside, with no one else around and says that I need to move forward with the Rockefeller project. ‘It is very important to the governor.’ ”

She quoted Guadagno as telling her: “The word is you are against it. And you need to move it forward or we are not going to be able to help you. I know it’s not right, these things should not be connected, but they are, she says. If you tell anyone I said that, I will deny it.”

Zimmer said she would swear under oath about the incident and challenged the others to do the same.

She also alleged the commissioner of the agency distributing federal Sandy money, Richard Constable III of the state Department of Community Affairs, asked her if she was opposed to the Rockefeller project when they appeared on a public television program together in May of last year. She said he told her “the money would start flowing to you” if she backed the project. A spokeswoman for Constable — like Guadagno, a former federal prosecutor — also denied that as “categorically false.”

Belmar Mayor Matt Doherty, a Democrat, was at the same event at Monmouth University.

“I spoke to each about Sandy-related topics, but I didn’t hear any conversation between the two of them,” he said. “I spoke to each of them individually.”

The Rockefeller Group told MSNBC, which first reported Zimmer’s allegations Saturday, that it had no knowledge of the alleged conversations: “If it turns out to be true, it would be deplorable.”

The back-and-forth put a spotlight on a potentially valuable tract in Hoboken that two key Christie allies have had a role in trying to develop: Samson and Lori Grifa, both attorneys at the politically connected law firm of Wolff & Samson.

Grifa, who preceded Constable as Community Affairs commissioner, told Zimmer when she was still commissioner that the Christie administration could help pay for a study of the land that would help speed development, Zimmer told MSNBC.

The Port Authority, which Christie jointly controls with his New York counterpart, Andrew Cuomo, agreed to pick up the $75,000 cost of a study in late 2010, about two months after Christie appointed David Samson as chairman of the agency, records show. The money was drawn from a fund that the New York and New Jersey governors tap into for pet projects in each state. The Port Authority chose the firm to conduct the study, Zimmer told the network. Samson did not respond to a request for comment Saturday.

As the study was under way, Grifa left the administration in early 2012 and became a lawyer at Wolff & Samson, Samson’s law firm. Grifa has a long history with Samson. She joined his law firm in 1997 and served as his chief of staff from 2002 to 2003 when he was New Jersey’s attorney general.

State records show that after she returned to the firm, she served as a lobbyist for the Rockefeller Group, promoting the company in front of state regulatory agencies last year.

The Port Authority-funded study, which came out last year, found that 10 of the 53 lots examined met the criteria for needing “redevelopment” — eight of them owned by a subsidiary of the Rockefeller Group. Those lots would then qualify for the highest level of support from the city, including the power to make loans to the developers and acquire property through eminent domain, according to the MSNBC report.

Around the time the city Planning Board was to vote on whether to approve the recommendation, Zimmer said, she was pressured to back the development.

Lisa Ryan, a spokeswoman for Constable said: “Mayor Zimmer’s allegation that on May 16, 2013, in front of a live auditorium audience, Commissioner Constable conditioned Hoboken’s receipt of Sandy aid on her moving forward with a development project is categorically false.”

The Hoboken Planning Board voted on May 8, 2013, to table the proposal to designate the blocks largely controlled by Park Willow LLC as a redevelopment area, pending further study.

Decisions over the development were playing out as low-lying Hoboken was trying to recover from Superstorm Sandy, which struck in October 2012. In the aftermath, billions in federal disaster money came to New Jersey, and the Christie administration was in charge of deciding how to spend most of it.

Zimmer said she requested $100 million in Sandy money from the state but, so far, the city has gotten only $342,000.

But the Christie administration said Hoboken’s request was a small part of the $14 billion requested by all of the state’s municipalities. It also said that Hoboken had received approval for $70 million through a variety of state and federal programs.

“It’s very clear partisan politics are at play here as Democratic mayors with a political axe to grind come out of the woodwork and try to get their faces on television,” Christie spokesman Colin Reed said in a statement.

The Christie administration pointed out that Zimmer has not raised concerns about the conversations until now. In August, as Christie was running for reelection and courting endorsements from Democratic mayors, Zimmer sent out a message on her Twitter account.

“To be clear I am very glad Governor Christie has been our Gov.,” she wrote, while explaining she was not endorsing anyone because Hoboken’s mayoral race is non-partisan.

In a radio interview that aired Jan. 10, after the lane-closure story picked up steam, Zimmer questioned whether her decision not to endorse Christie might be the reason for little Sandy aid and said she hoped it wasn’t.

Asked about that on Saturday, she said: “I never said it was about the … not endorsing. I said: ‘OK, was it retribution? I really hope that’s not the case.’ ”

Zimmer’s chief of staff, Daniel Bryan, said Saturday that Zimmer told him about the interaction with Guadagno shortly after it occurred.

“‘The lieutenant governor just threatened me,’Ÿ” Bryan recalled Zimmer saying to him in May right after he witnessed Guadagno and Zimmer talking in the parking lot of a ShopRite. He said Zimmer looked disturbed when they walked toward the car after her conversation with Guadagno. When they got in the car, she told him.

Zimmer met with Christie administration and NJ Transit officials on Thursday to ask for support for a plan to protect Hoboken from the kind of flooding the city experienced during Sandy. The plan, which she believes would qualify for Sandy recovery money, requires approval by the Christie administration. She said she feared the city would not get approval if she stayed silent.

“I’m just concerned that that threat is very much still out there, Zimmer said. “They did it with the first round of funding.”

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, chairwoman of the bipartisan Select Committee on Investigation that is probing the George Washington Bridge lane closures, said these new allegations from Zimmer will be included in the committee’s investigation, which starts on Wednesday.

“I think we have to get to the bottom of this,” said Weinberg, a Democrat from Teaneck. “It goes to the heart of the democracy.”

Her counterpart heading an investigative committee in the Assembly, John Wisniewski, a Democrat from Middlesex, called the allegations “disturbing” and said he would discuss the issue with the committee’s special counsel to determine the panel’s next step.